Barad-dur: A Study of Sauron's Tower
by Morgul-squirrel
Summary: Well sort of. Basically, this an essay full of stuff, about things, related to Middle-earth's most notorious tower featuring a gratuitous usage of the word 'and.' It's a bunch of canon material, spliced with my own crazy ideas compiled in one place for you to read, scratch your head at, or use for your own devious purposes if you wish (please help yourself.)
1. Forward

**Forward**

(I shall keep this brief, as I know a long-winded glorified Author's Note is not what you're here for.)

Barad-dûr has always fascinated me, and I spent long hours trying figure out how high the tower was, and far the Eye could actually see (if we're using Peter Jackson's movie fore reference) then about eighty miles or so, but if we're using the books then a whole heck of a lot farther than that. (How I came to these conclusions will be discussed in a later chapter. There was math involved, and it hurt.)

And I will try to answer other questions besides. How Barad-dûr had access to water, or how the people of Sauron's Tower might have been adept farmers.

I will also be taking requests. So if you have any questions please shoot them forward, and I will try to answer them.

A fair warning. This will not be receiving regular updates, as I have other things going on. But I do intend to continue this for some time, so please add it to your alerts, and try not to freak-out if it falls to the bottom of that list. But do feel free to PM me as often as you wish, to nag me. ;)

(Nagging works, more often than not. And I don't mind some light pestering.)

I would also like to point out that this is not the most organized of pieces. I just answer questions as they come and explore ideas as I think of them. Much of what I put here, while having a basis within the book lore, will likely deviate once things get rolling. That said, I will be taking a look at Peter Jackson's rendition of the tower, as well as the version created by Rankin and Bass (mostly for the fun of it.)

This is an exploratory piece, written mainly for fun, and because world building can be and is a struggle, especially in regards to a place so mysterious. Everything here is up to debate (and I love geeking over stuff like this so by all means share your ideas ;) ) so if you're thinking of writing a fic that takes place in the black heart of Mordor, you are of course, free to use and anything you wish to from here.

And I own nothing. Some of the questions are mine, some have been asked by others. These are my answers to them, and while I try to be mathematically, magically, and architecturally accurate, I must inform you that I am no mathematician (otherwise I'd be digging up dinos in Mongolia) nor am I magician, and I'm certainly not an architect, and while I can claim to have some personal knowledge of hydroponic garden and farming, I am a hobbyist, not an expert. And for the record I claim no ownership of anything within these chapters.

So moving forward, as the title suggests what do we really know about Tolkien's Tower?

Well to start, Barad-dûr is described a massive place with courthouses and prisons the size of hills. And it's higher towers are lost amid the clouds. A darkness even greater than the cloouds (I imagine to be a bit like Ungoliant's un-light) veils the tower, making its exact details difficult to see.

It's described as having an utmost tower, so presumably there were multiple towers.

According to the LOTR Wiki, the structure stood about 1,400 meters or 4,593 feet tall. So just shy of a mile in height. Is this accurate? I have no idea, since a lot of people have theories about this, but personally I like the idea of it being absurdly tall. So in TYW and any other fics I've written I'll just straight up tell you it's a mile tall, exactly, because anti-entropy, chaos-hating Sauron ain't got no time for approximations. This being said, there are several answers to this question and all shall be examined under the proverbial microscope later.

So what else do we know from canon?

Well it was built on the southern spur of Ered Lithui in the norther part of Gorgoroth, which I've taken to imply, the foundation of the tower is the foot of a mountain. Sauron chopped down a mountain, and replaced it with a tower. And carrying my theory further, I believe the stone from the mountain was used to build the tower, but I'll go into my head-canon about the tower's actual construction later.

The tower was roughly 30 miles from Mount Doom, and 100 miles from the Black Gate.

From the steel gate of the tower, a causeway ran out to the plain of Gorgoroth, across a mighty bridge, that somewhere I read was a few miles long…uh I need to cite my resources. (That'd be helpful. Right?) The bridge in question could have been as short as three miles or as long as eight. Eight I believe being the more realistic figure. (Again having my sources at hand would be a benefit, rather than trying to recall all this from memory, at three in the morning, but again this will be another matter dealt with later in greater detail.)

We also know lava was channelled across the plain to the tower, quite likely used in the foundries and forges. (The Peter Jackson movies get this right, as well as the bridge.)

The tower is described as hard, cold, and made of iron, and adamant. Adamant typically refers to diamonds…but it's unlikely the tower was made of literal diamond. That said there are black diamonds. So you know... that would actually be freakishly awesome. Why settled for the polished marble floors when instead you can the tower's interior shimmer like an all-consuming pool of liquid obsidian. (Please somebody adopt the idea of a black diamond Barad-dûr. This needs to be a thing! And then kindly link me your fanfic so I can read it. Thanks!)

But aside from delightful fantasy of black diamond towers, adamant mostly means, 'hard and unbreakable.'

The topmost tower is most likely where Sauron dwelt, but even if he didn't have his abode a mile in the sky, the Window of the Eye was certainly located there.

Regrettably there is little more to glean from source material beyond these delightful tidbits, Tolkein was purposely vague when describing the tower. But this is where I shall step in and try to fill in the gaps.


	2. Water, the Essence of Life

**Barad-dûr a Bunch of Stuff to Sift Through**

 **Water, the Essence of Life:**

On its surface, the northern parts of Mordor are bleak, dark, and very dry. The land is dusty, and rocky. A three mile long bridge spans from Barad-dûr's mighty gate to stretch across a moat of fire and then a large swath of land made up of jagged razor sharp rocks.

This is not a hospitable place to live, just looking at it, but how could a massive tower, let alone a tiny village survive here? It's dry, it's barren, it's windy, and freezing during the winter, so why would Sauron with all his wisdom choose such a lifeless place that seemingly can't support lichens and grasses let alone people?

The problem that I have personally, with Barad-dûr serving as a functional city is water. It needs, as cities always do- a water source. Without water you can't drink, you can't eat, you forge anything, you can't support an army-bottom line-you can't live.

So a few ideas come to mind. The first is that Sauron discovered ground water before he settled the area. Barad-dûr is lot further away from Mount Doom than the movies suggest, but I digress.

It wouldn't be unreasonable to assume there was ground water. Whether it was hot springs,mineral dense, or fresh and clean is neither here nor there. It was enough to convince Sauron setting up shop in that exact location was a good idea.

The tower sits on the base of a mountain. Basically there was a mountain, and based on personal interpretation of events; Sauron hacked the top off(?) maybe more(?) and used broken bits of mountain to serve as the foundation of the tower. I'm guessing that's what happened. So you have an entire mountain serving as the corner stone of what is going to be a mega-citadel.

In these mountains, there was likely stream water, but how potable it was is immediately made suspicious, given Sauron's propensity for industry and his love of ash filled cloudy skies. But it would be reasonable that wells could have been dug to bring up water. But for such a massive city, measly wells would be inefficient.

In the city of Babylon, and Archimedes Screw was used to lift water from the ground and water the gardens. The screw was not incredible invasive, and could draw a great deal of water up to the surface, and you don't need very many them, and it's possible Sauron with his mind of metal and gears could have come up with something of a similar nature. The question then becomes: is he drawing water directly into the tower or are these screws a miles off in some valley?

Because the tower sits on a mountain, my gut feeling is that water would be drawn from a distance and brought to the city, but this is my personal opinion. He did chop off the mountain's top to put his tower there, so... him digging wells or installing screws into a mountain's base would be feasible.

To get a sense of how this would be feasible, we need only look to Roman aqueducts. Mordor's aqueducts would be covered, to protect the water from ash and soot. In the city the aqueducts could feed pools (intercity wells) bathhouses, latrines, and everything else a city such as Barad-dûr might need. Now after a while the water gets used so many times and is no longer safe to drink so it's conceivable in my head at least, that poor quality water could be used for hydroponic farming. You can grow a lot of plants in very little space with water, and this water in question would be filled with waste materials making it rich in minerals and nutrients that the plants could use as food.

If hydroponic farming sounds ridiculous, then an alternative theory, is that unclean water is filtered. How? I don't know. But Sauron, smart as he was, could feasibly have done something, to see it cleaned, and recycled.

One very effective means to filter water, is through plants. In the case my TYW universe there's hydroponic gardening, but there's also an arboretum, full of fruit trees and flowering trees, and benches to sit in. Its Barad-dûr's Central Park, heavily guarded, exclusive access only, complete with a few streams and ponds. There are a couple of birds from Harad and Rhûn in residence to screech and shriek when least expected, perfect for anyone wishing to experience a heart attack. The sole purpose of the arboretum aside from looking pretty is to start the water filtration process, so that when the water leaves the arboretum there's less need for mechanical processes to filter the water. (Maybe this is where the Ent-wives are kept? Maybe he didn't kill them-he just needed some really organised gardeners?)

But there is a problem with aqueducts. Aqueducts are good for carrying water over vast distances and downwards. But how do you carry water upward? Depending on how tall you believe (or wish) Barad-dûr to be, water could freeze at the top of the tower in winter, if not the rest of the year as well. And if you like your towers really high…well then you've got more frozen water to worry about.

Feasibly there could be spells that keep the water from freezing, and likewise spells that protect the aqueduct from erosion and ice. But there's a real world solution to this problem as well.

We like to think that pipelines and pressure systems as modern technology, but the first functioning pipes were built during the years of Henry VIII and possibly a bit before his time. Were these pipelines perfect? No. But pressure encourage water to travel upward, so if you've got a really tall tower, and there's a risk of water freezing, then something like pipes, that can insulated within the tower's walls might be a feasible and practical means by which to get water to the top of tower.

All in all I think it quite likely the Barad-dûr had an efficient water system, but it have also had something few other places Tolkien's verse would not have had: running water. Making Mordor's denizens or at least the Dark Lord one of the most spoiled and pampered people around.


End file.
